Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/192

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STUDIES OF A BIOGRAPHER

whole system had trained us to act as became well-meaning stupid people, with just enough brains to recognise their betters. The doctrine takes fresh shape in his most popular book, the Physics and Politics. Bagehot had been profoundly interested in the discussions started by Darwin, and their bearing upon political questions. He was not, and did not in the least affect to be, an original inquirer. He followed the teaching of Mr. Herbert Spencer and Mr. Tylor—though with his own intellect always keenly at work. The book, therefore, is hardly an original contribution to the history of primitive societies, and his dogmas would, I suppose, often require to be stated as more or less plausible conjectures. What especially interests him is their application to contemporary problems. The methods which show how men grew out of monkeys might show how early societies grew out of savage hordes; and, then, as most of us are still, if not in the savage, in the infantile stage, how modern societies are actually held together. He invented the now proverbial phrase, 'the cake of custom,' to express one essential condition. Men can never emerge from pure barbarism till they are capable of forming a body of sacred inviolable laws to hold them